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Sunday, July 31, 2011

►Guy Denning (born 1965) is an English contemporary artist and painter based in France. He is the founder of the Neomodern group, a member of Stuckism International, and part of the urban art scene in Bristol.
Hailing from Bristol, and now residing in France, Guy Denning has taken the urban art world by storm with his beautiful, often haunting works. His androgynous figures, with their strange and often ethereal beauty, form a statement about the modern obsession with the fantasy of youth, beauty and cosmetic surgery as a surreal substitute for real life.

Denning is often viewed as an enigma. Sexual and temporal politics, objectification, and isolation are themes which are widely explored in his work, illuminated through the carefully honed juxtaposition of shape and shade to create a mood as well as a theme. The paintings blend the smoothness of classical form with harsh yet truthful statements about contemporary issues that plague Western Society.

Denning's early work included an interest in the work of Franz Kline and was characterised by powerful, expressive brushstrokes in mainly abstract paintings. More recently he has combined earlier influences with an increasingly figurative style of painting. The human figure features strongly in his latest work and he uses this subject matter to convey powerful emotions, often with political overtones. The Icarus series of works is an example of this approach. Structurally his work is very dynamic showing a concern for strong draughtsmanship with a spontaneous application of colour. He does not work to set motifs, but makes paintings and drawings from observation and photographic reference.

Guy Denning uses not only powerful brush strokes to express his emotions deeply but also scratches the paint to show the audience the intensity of the emotions he is trying to portray with his artwork. Guy Denning's Requiem 2 is a good example of this. Denning's work involves other techniques such as blacking out eyes and mouths maybe to emphasize Denning's theme of darkness, horror and maybe even despair. He also sometimes uses stencils and collaged text. A question that is often asked about Denning's work is whether it reflects his own emotions and feelings or is the artwork simply presented the way it is to emphasize the condition of the subject.
He has stated that his work has been significantly informed by the subject of war "When I was about 11 or 12 I came to France with my parents and they took me to the war cemetery at Verdun. It was the most significant thing that ever happened to me."
From 1992, he has exhibited across Britain.Since 2007 he has exhibited also in the United States of America, Italy and France. In 1997, he founded the Neomodern group. In 2004, he founded the Bristol Stuckists group. His work appeared in the Triumph of Stuckism exhibition at Liverpool John Moores University as part of the 2006 Liverpool Biennial. The show was curated by Naive John.

Artist's Statement…
"The visual arts are the focus of culture; they are the most important road leading humanity away from its old home of 'nature'. From the earliest finger scratched image in the dirt, to the cave paintings of Lascaux to the iron 'angel of the north' they represent our fundamental desire and drive to replace the natural chaos with a cultural order. The visual arts so often have served spiritual ends because of this representation. At its basest level artists take dirt, model it and make significance. It is no coincidence that the state funded galleries of the world have taken on the presence that only religious buildings once had.
Art isn't about communication. It's about the search for significance and control in a world of anonymity and chaos."

►"The "Waves and Particle" paintings developed from an attempt to pull back and understand the bigger picture. I formerly had defined my work as integrating natural and man-made forms. Now, I see them as more similar than not. Now, I'm painting a universe of energy that occasionally articulates itself as form.
I believe that mark-making; painting, drawing, sculpting, et al, personifies both the wave and the particle. Energy and matter; the artists' loaded brush touching the canvas.
My paintings continue to evolve, but the name of the series, "Waves and Particles" still define what my work is about." - Howard Hersh

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

►There is considerable emphasis on and appreciation of wit, including visual metamorphosis, consisting of sequential motions, photos, graphic elements in which one thing evolves into another. Here, in a series of seemingly logical steps, a photography is transformed into a metamorphosis...

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

►Born on October 24th,1983, in the town Novi Sad, Serbia. Valentina's interest in art began at an early age. Her entire childhood was spent drawing, illustrating and painting. After finishing elementary school and high school for design she continued her education on faculty for applied arts 'Academy of Art Novi Sad" on section graphic design and from year 2008 she is a student on Master studies on same faculty with a major in "book graphic and illustration".

Heavily inspired by urban culture and the pop surrealism movement, Valentina Brostean has developed a unique and very personal style.She has an eye for the strange beauty in the grotesqueries of life. Inspired by the relationship between dreams, natural world and the emptiness of consumer culture, she creates and brings unique characters to life from her imaginary world.

Her body of work is built of melancholy interaction between man-made status symbols and frozen moments of the utopian childhood memories. Strongly focused on figurative narration her characters simply reflect us – modern society without its masks, without the fake presentations that make us acceptable to whatever group we are a part of.

Artist's statement:"I have always had an eye for the strange beauty in the grotesqueries of life; This appreciation is now very evident in work that I am making. Inspired by the relationship between dreams, natural world and the emptiness of consumer culture, between safe childhood playing to everyday marks of reality I bring and create a new type of creatures in my imaginary world. It is a whole range of characters from the ones in darker corners of the streets of soulless cities to the safe and pure creatures from imagination in my wonderland trying through them to prove that I have never grown up, or at least have never lost touch with my innocent childhood self.

My body of work is built of this melancholy interaction between man-made status symbols and frozen moments of the utopian childhood memories. In my work I often flirt with different typefaces, superimposing pieces of print on top of my illustrations, or using them as part of the drawings. I often use draws in black ink on top of these collages, using all kind of hand written scribbles often, which pull the focus of the work back from the adult world to the realms of childhood. This experimenting with more text and new techniques led me to emerging of very personal style.

The characters i paint may seem like some creatures from another dimension, real but unreal, sometimes very closely connected with childhood, playful and inventive, sometimes abandoned and tragically sad and full of misery. But i think they are simply us, modern society without it’s masks, without the fake presentations that make us acceptable to whatever group we are a part of. Yet the only place where we are truly revealed the way we really are is one from the inside. We all share feelings of fear and loneliness. We all sometimes feel ugly and insecure.

If you examine my work closely, you might come to the realization that my creatures are really kind of self portraits, set in a fantastical landscapes of imaginary world which echoes of her own… a bitter, yet sweetly coated prescription for modern life."

Valentina has been invited to participate in collaborative art projects all around the world in diverse solo and group gallery shows. She has more than ten years of experience with several agencies doing illustration projects, print and educational work. She is now working as independent artist focusing on her personal expression through painting and collaborating with talented people on various projects – anything where she can apply her creativity. Her work has been featured in numerous magazines for visual culture.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

►Valeria Prieto, based in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, studied graphic design at the Institute of Architecture, Design and Art at the University of Ciudad. She’s been teaching contemporary art and illustration at elementary, middle and high schools in Mexico since 2002. She also serves as a photographer and collaborator in short films and animations.

"Those images were shot with Sony Cyber Shot TX5, and then I selected some vintage images/elements to add more life into them. Sometimes I use a peephole and a crystal with cuts to get various background effects and I like to merge several photos into one.

I have loved photography since childhood. One of the best things I’ve seen in the city where I live (city of Juárez, Chihuahua, MX) are the sunsets, so I love to take pictures of them because every day it is different, especially in winter the sunsets are so colorful that I don’t need to apply color correction. I like to play with the shots by adding items such as musical notes and birds on electric wires, buildings or images that may become part of those great scenarios."

Friday, July 1, 2011

►Minh Dam is a professional watercolor painter and amateur photographer. He was born in Hanoi in 1984 and has lived in Poland since 1991. He graduated in 2009 from the Architecture Faculty at Warsaw University of Technology and now continues with his Master’s studies there.

Besides teaching drawing and watercolour at Lineare, he is also a member of the founding committee of the Association of Polish Watercolor Artists and Vice-Head of the Scientific Group on Drawing at the Architecture Faculty of the Warsaw University of Technology. Minh Dam’s work has been displayed in many exhibitions across Poland and Europe.

►About me...

Dreaming it & doing it...
An artist on a mission to discover, explore, create, love and inspire an artful life.
I strongly believe in creative thinking and feel that design can be fanatic often and complicated which on the other side keeps the basis for creative experiments. I know that I always desire more than I accomplish at the moment, but the art is never ending story,…abounded unfortunately yes…
If you could read my mind, what a wonderful tale my thoughts would tell ...